


The Line in the Sand

by reeei



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Angst and Feels, Character Study, M/M, Multi, Winston Deserves Better Than This
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 05:56:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8611387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reeei/pseuds/reeei
Summary: Jack and Winston had a little chat, and Jack made some (probably dumb) decisions. [cue Ana sighing from a distance]orThe Sad Jack fic, brought to you by Insomnia (TM)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Open Ending. You can interpret it whichever way you want it to go, what I'm thinking is... canon doesn't tell us where this is going and my plot bunny ran off to another fic that was supposed to be a pwp SO HERE YA GO.
> 
> Thanks to Dawn and Winnie for reading it through for me <333

Jack heard a knock and looked up, a little surprised to see Winston at his door.

“Sir, do you have a minute?” Winston asked.

Jack nodded and gestured for Winston to come into his office.

Winston closed the door behind him. “I heard some convincing gossip and thought it best to confront the person involved in it instead of wondering about the truth blindly.”

Jack blinked, leaning back in his chair. “Which gossip?”

Winston hesitated before he said, “About your relationship with Commander Reyes...”

Jack sighed inwardly, “Which is private.”

“And Agent McCree,” Winston added.

That had Jack’s gut clenched. “Huh.” He considered for a moment before he asked, “Does it bother you?”

“So it’s true.” Winston was looking straight at him now, observing.

“I can’t say,” Jack replied, “I don’t even know what you’re referring to.”

Winston gave him a look. “Thank you, sir. That’s all I wanted to ask.”

Despite the lack of reaction and judgement from Winston, Jack had a sudden urge to explain himself. “Any personal affair of mine will not affect professional matters.”

“Of course, sir,” Winston said before turning and padding out of his office.

 

 

 

Jack sat on his hands for forty minutes before his resolve broke and went to find Reyes in his office. 

“It can never happen again.”

“What can’t?” Reyes didn’t even look up.

“I don’t know how, but people found out. And it can  _ never  _ happen again.” Jack ignored his question.

Reyes did look up then. “What are you telling me for? I’m not the one who started it.”

“We both know you’re a manipulative bastard and you have that kid wrapped around your little finger, so cut that shit out.”

“Says the big boss who slept with two of his subordinates  _ at the same time _ , how scandalous.” Reyes’ tone was flat.

“What I’m telling you is, don’t sleep with him again.” Jack emphasized.

Reyes stood up and leaned forward, palms flat on his desk, their faces mere inches apart. “If you don’t want to, don’t do it. But what I do in my free time is my business.”

All these years, there was a fuzzy, delicate line drawn between them, they danced around it, never acknowledging it, and Jack belatedly realized he had just crossed that line.

“Now, get out of my office,  _ sir _ .”

Jack desperately wanted to hit rewind.

He turned around and left.

 

 

That was barely two weeks before all hell broke loose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [angst free alternate ending of ch1 lol]
> 
>  
> 
> “How did people find out about us?”  
> “What ‘us,’ there’s no ‘us.’”  
> “Aw, boss, you hurt his feelings.”  
> “...”  
> “...”  
> “Probably my fault for making you two screamed too loud.”  
> “I did not scream.”  
> “It was definitely your crying, you imbecile.”  
> “(snorts)”  
> “I AM WALKING AWAY. YOU TWO ARE MEAN.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was trying something out in this chapter, kind of a time jump??? Please bear with me.

There was a time when Reyes and Jack were in sync. They trained together, fought together, hurt together, slept together, stayed together.

Jack almost dared to say it was love.

It didn’t last.

There was a time when Reyes and McCree were in sync. It was different than what Reyes and Jack had -- an oncoming storm that the enemy couldn’t run away from -- but more like a fog that crept up on you and choked you before you even sensed its presence.

It was terrifying to watch from the outside, but it didn’t last, either.

There were thirty minutes when all three of them were in sync. It was skin and sweat and cum and regrets.

Jack didn’t know if it was the regret of having done it, or having only done it once.

He didn’t dwell too much on it.

The point was, Jack remembered what it felt like to be in sync with Reyes, and when he fought Reaper the first couple of times, something about that man reminded Jack of Reyes.

_It’s probably the shotguns_ , Jack told himself. But he still tried to talk to Reaper the last time they ran into him, and the situation got away from him.

When Reaper got close to him, it was as if his reality was altered and all intelligent thoughts went out the window. All Jack could come up with were ‘who are you’ and ‘why are you doing this.’ Reaper mocked him and slid away. Jack came back to himself pulse too fast, skin clammy.

That couldn’t be Reyes, that couldn’t be.

 

 

 

Jack emerges from the shared sleeping quarter in the basement, a little startled when he comes face to face with Winston.

“I thought we should talk,” Winston says.

Jack nods and follows Winston to a secluded spot on the cliff.

Winston looks out on the Alboran Sea, shielding his eyes with his palm against the sun. “I heard some rumors.”

Jack blinks, feeling a sense of deja vu. He pulls out his sun-glasses and puts them on, the Mediterranean sun in July is not merciful to his sensitive eyes. “What rumors?”

Winston pauses for a few seconds and asks, “are you fraternizing with the enemy?”

Jack blurts out a _what_ before Winston quickly adds, “I don’t know how it started, but the rumor is that you’re friendly with Reaper.”

Hearing that name, Jack puts two and two together. “It’s not what it looked like. I know what Lena saw, but I think there’s something more going on with Reaper than we originally thought.”

Winston adjusts his glasses, his gaze intense. “Okay. Please share with us what you find if you learned more.”

“Of course,” Jack says. “Anything else you want to get off your chest?”

Winston looks back at the seemingly endless blue. “I didn’t really mean to ‘do your job.’”

Jack can hear the air quotes in his voice. Winston deserves better than an old man’s bitter fit. “I know, and I was being mean. I’m sorry. You were right, somebody had to.”

Winston is far braver than Jack ever was and ever will be, picking up the slack and cleaning up the messes his former superiors left.

“I’m sorry I let you down, I let everyone down,” Jack says with his throat tight. “I fucked up back then, and I didn’t have the balls to own up to my mistakes. Even now, I still live under an alias, letting other people fix what I had broken.”

Winston has always have the quiet yet powerful presence that make people want to be better. He is the hero the world deserves, the hero the world needs.

Jack Morrison is a washed out coward who knows how to use a gun.

 

 

 

McCree and Jack entered the small house while Hanzo climbs up to the roof, Ana somewhere in the next building watching their back.

Jack searches the third floor while McCree takes the second. Jack is almost done with the search when he notices he hasn’t heard McCree’s footsteps in a while. It could be nothing, maybe he stops to search some closets.

Jack says into his earpiece, “McCree, come in, over.”

“I don’t think he has moved in a while, sir. And he hasn’t even made much sound,” Athena says.

Now he’s really starting to worry. “Athena, try to get visual in the room he’s in. McCree, take a deep breath if you have company, over.”

Jack’s enhanced hearing picks up a soft sound of inhale, he starts moving toward the stairs. He says into his earpiece again, “Ana, Hanzo, we have company. Athena is trying to get a visual, I’m going to check on McCree. Athena, contact Winston for backup; Ana, watch the entrances, I don’t want any more surprises; Hanzo, come inside through the back door. Over.”

Jack carefully treads down the stairs to the second floor. He passes two small rooms, at the end of the narrow hallway is a third room with its door ajar. He really, _really_ hope Athena is close to finding any camera in the room.

Jack gently pushes the door open and walks through. The first thing he sees is McCree on his knees with his hands on the back of his head. Jack stops dead when he sees the other person in the room.

Reaper.

Without his mask on.

“Gabriel?” Jack feels like someone just rearranged his internal organs.

“Gabriel Reyes is dead,” Reaper -- Reyes says in a deep, echoing tone, Jack can barely recognize his voice, “so is Jack Morrison, and soon to join them is Jesse McCree.”

Jack slowly moves toward Reyes, trying to put himself between McCree and those shotguns.

 

 

 

If Jack was being honest with himself, he had always been a little jealous of McCree.

Jack had thought what he had with Reyes was special until McCree achieved it with a lot less time and effort. Then that kid threw it away like it was nothing. Jack had watched Reyes hurt with battling feelings inside himself. On one hand he wanted to track McCree down and make him hurt ten times worse; on the other hand, he wanted to gloat in Reyes’ face.

People liked to say that Jack inspired them, that he was a natural leader, that everyone would follow him to the edge of the earth, but those people had never met Jesse McCree. McCree was a real charmer, he could make the toughest person with a three inch lead wall around them give up all their protective layers and tell him their darkest secret and deepest fear. Hell, he charmed Reyes, didn’t he? McCree was practically a liaison between Blackwatch and Overwatch because he somehow were friends with everybody.

Jack was curious to know the secret, to know why McCree could have what he couldn’t have anymore, what was it McCree had that he didn’t.

Everyone had a soft spot for that kid. When those gentle eyes landed on Jack, the jealousy and all the other ugly feelings melted away. That day, when those eyes turned flirty, Jack followed.

People always assumed Jack was a nice person, a good man. Those were empty words to him. People always compared Reyes with omnics, saying that he was a robot without feelings. People only saw what they wanted to see. Jack was the one ‘without feelings’, the apathetic one; Reyes was the one with a volcano inside him, but he hid it well. It was probably one of the reasons Jack got the promotion instead of Reyes, the politicians up high didn’t want someone who would change the world for the better, they wanted someone who would maintain the status quo.

Jack was a moth that wanted to know if the fire was as warm as it was bright. It turned out Jack was a moth made of stone, and the fire spat him out.

 

 

 

“Jack,’ Ana’s voice seeps into Jack’s ear, “Athena and I both have visual on you, Hanzo is in the hallway. Be ready.”

Jack is now right behind McCree, he keeps his voice calm as best he can. “Drop your weapons.”

“Tell Amari her darts won’t work on me, you’d need something much more powerful to take me down,” Reaper -- Reyes -- says.

“And who would I be relaying that message for, Mr. Hot Topic?” Jack retorts.

Reyes sneers, “Whoever Mr. All-American Jumpsuit deems fit.”

McCree still hasn’t made a sound or moved even an inch. Jack’s worried level is at an all time high.

Jack hears a muffled noise behind him, and he can tell Reyes hears it too. Half a second later, Jack’s vision is overwhelmed by the swirl of Hanzo’s dragons. He almost shouts out a ‘no’ before seeing Reyes’s body dissolves into smoke-like substance and slides out the window.

Jack squads down in front of McCree to check on him. McCree is staring at the floor with tears in his eyes, but he’s breathing. Jack sits down hard on the floor, feeling a million years old.

 

 

 

Jack hadn't been sleeping since he woke up with a broken body and shattered soul. He tried to, but his mind wouldn’t let him rest. At first, he lay awake at night, thinking about all the things he could’ve done and should’ve done, and all the things he had done that he wanted to erase. He did his best not to think about how much all these made him hate himself. After a while, he did other things when he couldn’t sleep. He ran around the base, he worked out in the empty gym room, he read, he played the video games the kids had left in the rec room. He even started to knit until Ana told him to leave her yawns alone.  


When Ana agreed to join the new Overwatch, Jack was more than relieved. Ana kept him sane, kept him on the human side.

Jack had felt like he lost a limb when Ana disappeared. And with both McCree and Ana gone, there was no one to buffer between Jack and Reyes, they started to spin out of control until the inevitable collision.

Ana calmed people. She was like a balm on a burn, or a timely rain in the desert. But you wouldn’t want to be there when the thunderstorm comes. Jack had learned his lesson early on during a mission where he ran off alone towards hostile zone with Ana shouting in his ears. He got himself a week in the hospital bed and a raged Ana for a month.

Jack knew Ana and Reyes had talked a lot back in the day, they were friends after all. Sometimes, Jack would walk past a room and hear their laughter coming from behind closed door or see them laughing with each other in a faraway corner. Those were the rare times Jack had seen Reyes with his walls down during 'The Cold War’, as McCree would jokingly call the _thing_ between Reyes and him.

Jack had been bitter about the laughter that once belonged to him was now for everyone else but him to hear.

 

 

 

“He’s gone,” McCree says without preamble.

They’re in the jet on their way back to base, no one is bleeding, so Jack counts it as a win.

“Are you sure?” Ana asks.

McCree only nods.

“Then we need to stop him,” Jack says.

McCree’s attention snaps to Jack, his gaze intense.

“I guess we do,” he finally says.

 

 

 

The thought of Reyes alone used to warm Jack up in all the right and wrong places. Now, the mere thought of Reaper felt like Jack just dived into an icy lake, body seizing up before water even entered his lungs.

Jack wanted to run away from it all, but he had done that once, he owed it to everyone around him and himself to stick it out this time.

Jack didn’t think McCree could do it, and even if he could, Jack didn’t want McCree to have to do it. It was part possessiveness and part guilt, Jack knew, but he still wanted to spare McCree.

And Ana.

Ana was going to be so pissed at Jack, this was going to be the second time in their lives that Jack truly upset Ana.

Jack asked Hanzo if he would come with him.

Hanzo listened to his plan and then nods. Jack could see that Hanzo understood why he was doing what he was doing.

“I’ll watch your back,” Hanzo said.

And they set out into the night.


End file.
